Scalability and Sociability in Online
Learning EnvironmentsThis is a chapter from a
book explaining the theoretical presuppositions behind the
open learning support project. The argument is nicely laid
out and clear, weaving, it seems to me, two strands of
throught nicely together: first, that "the achievement of
higher-order learning outcomes, such as those near the top
of Bloom’s taxonomy, requires social interaction to be an
integral part of the learning experience," and second, that
"self-organization is, of a necessity, directed by its
agent participants who make individual decisions based
solely on the information available to them locally." These
are simple ideas, but if true (and I am quite convinced
that they are true) they strike at the heart of educational
organization as we know it, and comment (unfavorably) on
current approaches to the design of online learning. By
David Wiley, autounfocus, April 19, 2004
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Educommons.org Hijacked!You have
to feel for David Wiley after his educommons.org domain was
hijacked and used by a porn site operator. The site now
features a disclaimer, so visitors aren't greeted with a
fleshy foldout, but it is still frustrating. Visitors will
not the same people running a hack of my Referrer script
which, now that I've taken it offline for just this sort of
reason, is thankfully neither sending nor receiving
visitors from this site. Anyhow, as Dave says, remove your
links to educommons.org right away. By David Wiley,
autounfocus, April 9, 2004
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Less is More: Designing an Online
CourseThe message in this useful article is
simple: "one needs to design an online course with an
attitude that it is different from a residence course.
Instead of piling on the assignments that instructors must
grade and making irrational promises to answer all posts,
the instructor must design a course with one thought in
mind: less is more." What follows are five useful pointers:
teaching experience is helpful, faculty should attend
workshops before leaping into the fray, courses should be
transformed and not merely transferred, online instructors
should move to the side, and students should be assigned a
good textbook. By R. Thomas Berner, DEOS News, April 14,
2004
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Thousands flock to download “Theory and
Practice of Online Learning”By all accounts,
Terry Anderson and Fathi Elloumi's “Theory and Practice of
Online Learning” has been a runaway open content success,
chalking up 11,000 downloads in the first few weeks since
its release. “There’s that sense that a public university
and an open university has more responsibility to be public
and open and share its resources,” he said, adding that
Athabasca University benefits as much as anyone the
exercise. “This provides exposure to the quality of work we
do, and it helps us reflect on our own work, and the work
of members within the institution. I learned a lot about AU
just by reading this book.” Couldn't have said it better
myself. By Press Release, Athabasca University, April 15,
2004
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Learning Objects 2004You have to
give them your email address to read this article, after
which you'll receive annoying but thankfully infrequent
suggestions that you subscribe. But the content is of good
quality, so you may want to proceed to this overview of
writings about learning objects. By Graeme Daniel,
WWWTools, April 19, 2004
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Duke University Cuts 8 A.m.
ClassesFor some reason, mathematics and logic
classes always seemed to be the ones scheduled before dawn,
well before my brain was anywhere close to working order.
Kudos, then to Duke, which is cancelling the 8:00 a.m.
nightmares. Via University Business. By Associated Press,
Yahoo! News, April 18, 2004
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The
Journal for Open and Distance Education and Educational
TechnologyThe link hadn't started working yet
when I tried it (talk about being on top of the news!) but
this announcement tells you what to expect: "the Scientific
Association "Hellenic Network of Open and Distance
Education" intends to launch the publication of a journal
in printed form and with a system of referees, entitled
Open Education-The Journal for Open and Distance Education
and Educational Technology”. Cool. By Antonis Lionarakis,
April 19, 2004
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Why the Sci-mag Barons are
RightCrispin Davis, chief executive of
publisher Reed Elsevier, defends the industry in this
article in the Observer. In an article unlikely to convince
the converted, Davis writes, "There is a conflict of
interest in a system where authors pay to publish.
Potentially, financial pressure to accept more articles
could lead to a lower quality of published research." One
wonders how the publishing industry, which faces the same
conflict of interest, is somehow magically immune. And, of
course, it isn't. Nor is quality somehow improved by
subscription barriers. Indeed, one suspects that the
barriers are the only thing keeping the quality myth alive.
By Crispin Davis, The Observer, April 18, 2004
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The Future of WebloggingBloggerCon was held over the weekend, and
if you didn't notice, don't fret. This article summarizes
some of the discussion with what seem to be calls from the
mainstream for bloggers to be more, well, mainstream.
Consider one speaker: "we need to encourage more people to
be journalists. Journalism involves actually interviewing
people, doing thorough background research on a subject,
presenting a rounded and dispassionate overview, and
reasoning through substantive arguments." All very fine,
but this is the picture of an uninformed outsider coming in
and trying to capture a story in eight graphs, in other
words, a journalist. Bloggers write from the inside,
though: they are the people who would be interviewed, who
have already done research, who have already considered the
arguments. Journalism is about a dispassionate
intermediary; blogging is about impassioned first person
views. Many people don't get that yet. By Nico Macdonald,
The Register, April 18, 2004
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